The Churches and Modern Thought / An inquiry into the grounds of unbelief and an appeal for candour

11.-The ghastly d

ress of rationalistic civilisation.... It is probable that no class of victims endured sufferings so unalloyed and so intense.... All these sufferings were the

, and p. 2

further notes on the

Empire passed its zenith in the first half of the second century-under Stoics. Historians agree that it was declining all through the third century. On the other hand, it was making fresh progress

dangerous though it might justly seem to the integrity of the Roman faith, was productive of consequences the most momentous to tribes who reverenced principally the pomp and mysterious ceremony attendant on the faith which they embraced, and would have scorned to bow down before priests or altars whose faultless humility merely recalled the rude shrines of their

e most undoubtedly miraculous of Italian relics." This fresh spread took place towards the close of the eighth century. After a hundred years or so for the leaven to work, we should expect to see a distinct advance in morality among both the clergy and the laity. We find, on the contrary, that duri

planation of that essence of the "relig

h passes away. When we begin discussing eternity we see that, from the point of view of natural science, nothing is eternal except the ultimate particles of matter and their forces; for no o